I agree that the Top Commenters Plugin is a kind of a comment-incentive. Some bloggers have even started offering special prizes for top commenters of the month. There’s an element of competitiveness involved, which I don’t really like.

However, I don’t think YesFollow is really an incentive. Real commenters often add value to a discussion by sharing their insights and I think they should be given some link benefit for taking the time to write.

I personally haven’t disabled NoFollow but have plans to do so.

A good discussion of NoFollow can be found at Search Engine Journal:
13 Reasons Why NoFollow Tags Suck

And BTW, I think the ‘the importance of linkage’ link in your article is broken

I’ve just moved to Wordpress and I am using the top commentator plugin.

I agree that the plugin can be abused (on both sides of the blog) but I’m still willing to give it a try.

If it leads to spamming of the comments then I will remove it.

I wont put anylinks that will go out of my blog unless very much required.It kilss the home blog.

@Maki: We probably have different definition of “spam comments”, I consider comments that add no value to my conversation spam, regardless of whether they were submitted by a bot or a real person.

Nice read and thanks for letting me know about my broken link.

@Ashish Mohta: you may want to read about the worst advice on link-building if you think this way.

Cheers,
Allen

I guess you could always manually moderate comments to make sure that commenters don’t just drop one-liners with links back to their blog.

I regard those as spam comments too and usually delete them or remove the linkback.

The link in your comment is broken too!

@Maki: If you go back to Part II of ‘5 Blog Aspects to Revise in 2007′, I have said there that I don’t support any kind of censorship. I don’t want to judge whether a comment is a spam or not because I may be slightly biased in some cases. If a reader thinks he will gain any value by commenting worthlessly on my blog, he’s very welcome to do so, but I’m not going to give him any incentives.

@HMTKSteve: Thanks! that slash is irritating me!

Cheers,
Allen

I also recently installed the Top Commentator plugin and it has had a small boost to my level of comments.

While my stats show I have been building traffic, I haven’t been able to entice people to add too many comments. I think this plugin can build the interest in commenting to where it can then grow on it’s own.

[…] Top Commenter Plugin – Allen’s post strikes irony with me, because if it wasn’t for John Chow’s top commenter bar. I wouldn’t have found Allen’s blog. […]

I like the Top Commentors thing. I don’t personally use Wordpress or some pre-fab blog software but I did code something similar which allows a hard link so that SE-Bots will crawl to those who are willing to post ‘worthy and constructive’ comments.

I personally did keep the ref=”nofollow” tag in the comment sections though. More links away from my site would be a bad thing for me as I would prefer to have more people link to me

Interesting point Allen.

I was wondering about something though: wouldn’t leaving comments with the site url, like comments on other sites and this site too, be considered an incentive by many since it indirectly exposes our urls to people who read our comments? Or were you only talking about plugins that focus on giving users more incentives than what is already out there?

I apologize if I am not understanding something correctly.

That is one point of view. And as you say it is better to let the comments come by them selves instead of giving people “rewards” for doing it. This will give you more quality comments, but less comments.

I think it is best for small blogs to use theese kinds of rewards, or otherwise they will not get many comments. But a big blog(like yours) should not be giving rewards for commenting, since the comments (of quality) will come anyways.

I couldn’t agree more. I also love finding new comments on my blog, but when they’re just “spammy” comments that don’t raise a question or contribute, the feeling of excitement gets sucked out of me quickly.

I am using the top commentators plugin right now, but I may decide to switch it off eventually. I really just enjoy publishing my thoughts as apposed to “competing in the blogosphere.”

Have a good one
Stew

[…] 2 Comment Related Plugins I Won’t be Using - Allen Heat […]

Hey Allen,

I don’t really see any problem with giving people incentives to leave comments - or to do lots of other things for that matter.

Providing incentive can be very helpful in getting people motivated to take an action - it makes it worth their time to take an action, instead of doing whatever else they choose with their time and resources.

You get to decide if those comments are high quality enough to keep, so you don’t lose anything.

Somehow trying to become a “top commentator” seems like it would be a really frustrating spam strategy anyway.

In a way I think this could be compared to choosing to pay for a product or service. Sure some companies will really skimp on quality to get max profit from your purchase, but in the end you’ll be dealing with those who give you a great product for a great price… and their will be someone for whom it will be worthwhile to make the product you want.

I think it can be a win-win.

Have an awesome day!
Dan

Hello Dan,

First of all, let me thank you very leaving your opinion, I love when people take the time to leave insightful comments, and even more if they disagree with what’s written in the post.

As I said in an earlier comment, I’m highly against censorship and will not delete any comment submitted by humans on this blog as long as there is no doubt that it is not pure advertising. This actually prevents me from deciding whether I can keep a comment or not.

The problem is when you are trying to build a blog with an influencing audience, giving incentives may drive a reader to comment out of the will to get a return and not necessarily contribute to the conversation, which later becomes some kind of a chorus for those who do it, and we all know how bad some of us are in doing our choruses…

Cheers,
Allen.H

I also completely disagree with the yesfollow (or dofollow on my blog) being an incentive. It’s merely un-breaking a problem that blogs created in response to a challenge they weren’t yet prepared to deal with.

Besides, the value that commenters get from a backlink is pretty minimal. Overall it’s meant a bit more moderation for me due to cheesy useless cmments, but it’s worth the minor effort.

You should embrace your top commentator whores!

The irony is that I’m only reading your post because John Chow uses the Top Commenter plugin that you rail against.

You make a good point, but ultimately YMMV, and that’s what should determine whether to use this or not.

Know your audience

Hello Jacob,

Don’t worry, I’m very aware of the fact I’m one of a top commenter on John Chow’s blog. See, although I do leave a lot of comments, I do think a lot of them are of some value to the conversation, and when you combine both quality and quantity, you get the best results. But when quantity greatly beats quality (like in most incentive campaigns), the product loses some of it’s value.

Thanks for dropping by,
Allen.H

I know my comment is late, but…

I am just moving to Wordpress and have the Top Commentator’s plugin installed. I think it’s good to give back to your best contributors. Of course this can be used for evil– but what can’t?

Доброго времени суток, форумчане сайта allenation.com

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